Giveaway

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Welcome readers!

Today, I have a special surprise for you! I teamed up with Red Sky Presents to bring you an excerpt of

Dark Territory

by Gabriel Gates & Charlene Keel

to celebrate the brand new reissue of the book with a chance to win a copy as well as a really special gift to go along with it. Check out the giveaway at the end of the page!

Dark Territory

Book 1

The Tracks Series

By J. Gabriel Gates & Charlene Keel

It’s tough being a teenager anywhere, but especially in a place where something sinister is going on and kids must use martial arts and newly acquired supernatural powers to fight dark forces taking over their town.

Star-crossed love and ancient evil meet in the deceptively quaint village of Middleburg. The last thing Ignacio expects to find, when his parents move him there from South Central Los Angeles, is a gang war—but the posh, preppie Toppers and the working-class Flatliners do not take up guns and knives to settle disputes. Instead they use deadly martial arts. When Raphael, leader of the Flatliners, falls in love with Topper girl Aimee, they must prepare for all-out war.

Divided by a set of mystical, abandoned railroad tracks that form a giant X at the edge of town, they are as likely to end up in a parallel dimension as they are in study hall or gym class. This award-winning YA fantasy adventure includes class-crossed sweethearts, teens with family issues, an all-knowing sensei, time travel, fallen angels and monsters in the basement.

“Masterful story tellers . . .”

Publisher’s Weekly

“An outstandingly gripping tale of love, honor and betrayal . . .”

The Mash, teen insert of the Chicago Tribune

“Dark Territory will set you on edge, and keep you hanging on until the very end.”

AZ Teen Magazine, Arizona

goodreads

Excerpt

Aimee wandered through the halls of Middleburg High, looking for familiar faces among the slamming locker doors, shouting boys and giggling girls. She passed Emily Gold and Rhonda Marris who glanced at her, then looked away and started whispering to each other. Stung, Aimee kept walking. The bell rang, a deafening clangor signaling that everybody was supposed to get to class.

As the herd thinned out, Aimee saw someone else she knew. There, standing a head taller than the two girls she was talking to, was Maggie, her best friend since fourth grade! Aimee broke into a run, darting past a big, lumbering boy with purple-tipped, spiked hair, and skidding to a halt in front of her friend.

“Maggie!” she exclaimed happily, a smile touching her lips for the first time all day. She opened her arms for a hug.

“Aimee,” Maggie said, her nose wrinkling slightly. “Well, I’m surprised. They let you back in school?” The girls with Maggie—Bobbi Jean and Lisa Marie—smirked at each other.

Aimee’s arms drifted back to her sides, her smile fading. “Yeah,” she said. “They let me back in. How come you never wrote me back?”

Maggie blinked and ran one hand through her silky blond hair. “Jeez, Aimes,” she said. “I thought about it but . . . rumor has it you’re a bad influence.”

The bell rang again and Maggie finally gave Aimee a smile. “Off to class,” she said brightly, and she and her friends were suddenly gone, leaving Aimee alone in the empty hallway.

Aimee took a deep breath. She felt hollow, like one of those cartoon characters who gets shot with a cannon and ends up with a big, round hole in its chest. Her dad was one thing, but she never expected that kind of reception from Maggie.

Before she would allow herself to think about it, her feet were moving, the soles of her shoes making little squeaking sounds on the terrazzo, until she reached the glass door leading to the office. Quickly, as if taking shelter from a storm, she ducked inside and hurried to the end of the long reception desk labeled, ATTENDANCE.

From behind the desk Mrs. Burns, the secretary, greeted her with a smile.

“Well, if it’s not Miss Aimee Banfield,” she said smugly, as if she knew some dark, terrible secret.

Aimee nodded, not trusting her voice not to crack with emotion.

“I’ve got your class schedule right here, and some papers for your dad to sign. Is he with you?”

Aimee shook her head.

“That’s okay,” Mrs. Burns said. “You can take them home. Just make sure you bring them back.” She leaned over the desk, scrutinizing Aimee. “You okay, hun?”

Aimee suddenly realized she had tears in her eyes, and she shook her head and blinked them away. “I’m fine,” she lied. “Just allergies.”

“You sure?” Mrs. Burns handed Aimee the papers with a phony smile. Aimee knew it was not kindness but curiosity that was the basis of the woman’s concern.

Did you see Jack Banfield’s daughter today? she would gossip as soon as Aimee was gone. She may be back, but she’s still a mess.

“I’m sure,” Aimee replied.

“Mr. Innis asked me to have you wait. He wants to welcome you back and show you around.”

“That’s okay,” Aimee said. “I’m sure I can find everything okay.”

“No, he promised your father he’d show you around. He’ll be right with you—right after he finishes with those boys.” With her last words, Mrs. Burns’ round, cherub-like face twisted into a frown, and she pointed. Aimee followed her gesture into a waiting area where six plastic chairs (two of them occupied) were lined up against a wall full of posters. One had a picture of several happy-looking penguins on it and a caption that read: Friendship: it warms even the iciest waters.

She rolled her eyes at the irony of the statement, sat down heavily under the romping penguins and slouched in the chair. For the last year, she had been in exile and had dreamed every day of returning home. But now that she was back in Middleburg, exile was seeming better and better every minute.

On the wall directly across from her was a small sign, emblazoned with the familiar warning posted on every bulletin board in every school in Middleburg:

Keep out of the railroad tunnels

And stay off the tracks

Don’t go into the train graveyard

Except the last line was missing. Every child in Middleburg, as far back as anyone could remember, got that warning every year from the time they could walk and talk, whether it was at home, at school or at church. But everyone usually ended it with: “Or the Middleburg Monster will break your backs . . .”

She shuddered.

“You cold?”

The soft, low voice stirred her from her thoughts. She looked up and her eyes focused at last on the two guys in the waiting area with her. One of them—a Hispanic kid—wore a baseball jersey. His head was tilted back against the wall and his eyes were closed. To Aimee, it looked like he was either sleeping or so supremely stressed out that he was in shut-down mode. The other guy, the one who was talking to her, had bright blue-green eyes and long, dark hair and he was wearing a dark gray zip-up sweatshirt. He was also dazzlingly handsome—or he would have been, if he hadn’t had a wad of blood-stained toilet paper stuffed into one side of his nose.

“What?” Aimee said.

“Are you cold? You’re shivering.”

Aimee looked down at herself. Her t-shirt was still damp from the morning rain and her arms, crossed over her chest, were covered with goose bumps. She hadn’t even realized she’d gotten soaked from the rain as she walked in from the car. Now, she was freezing.

She glanced at him, trying to keep the tension out of her voice as she answered. “Yeah, I guess so. I didn’t even notice.”

The handsome boy was already unzipping his hoodie and offering it to her.

“You don’t have to—” she began, but when she didn’t take it from him, he leaned over and draped it over her shoulders anyway.

The sweatshirt smelled like some kind of amazing cologne, musky and sweet with a hint of cinnamon, and it was already warm from the heat of the boy’s body. Aimee nestled into it, an involuntary sigh filling her, reaching to her bones, before it escaped her lips. For the first time since returning to Middleburg, she felt halfway content.

“Thanks,” she said, but between her sudden relaxation and the pleasant, nervous feeling this boy was giving her, the word came out only as a whisper. She cleared her throat and tried again.

“Fight?” she asked, pointing to his nose.

He nodded.

“Did you win?”

He glanced at the Hispanic kid, who opened his eyes for a moment, then closed them again. “I think it was a draw,” he said. “But we’ll win the next one.”

“Oh,” Aimee replied, conversationally. “There’s going to be a next one?”

The boy nodded, his hair falling across his eyes. “There’s always a next one.”

The three sat in silence for a moment longer, the Hispanic kid banging his head gently against the painted cinderblock wall, Aimee wrapped in the warm cocoon of the hoodie and the cute boy glancing at her at thirty-second intervals, trying (Aimee hoped) to come up with another excuse to talk to her. But as he turned his beautiful blue-green eyes on her again, the principal’s door opened.

“Raphael, Ignacio, come in please,” the principal’s voice sounded deep and authoritative, and the two boys got to their feet.

“Do you want your sweatshirt . . ?” Aimee began, but her words trailed off as she realized with amazement that the boy she’d been talking to, the boy who was now heading into the principal’s office, was Raphael Kain. Raphael, who had been the heartthrob of Middleburg Middle School. He’d been cute back then but she’d had no idea he would turn into something like a sultry, younger version of Johnny Depp. Between his newfound maturity, the swollen, bloody nose and the long hair, she hadn’t recognized him at first. And, evidently, he hadn’t recognized her either.

He gave her a smoldering glance as he passed, and then disappeared behind the principal’s frosted-glass door.

She was in for a second shock when, an instant later, her brother Rick emerged from the principal’s office with his best friend Zhai at his side.

Aimee was on her feet, now, approaching her brother, but it was Zhai who noticed her first.

“Aimee!” he said, surprised to see her. He gave her a quick hug.

Rick only looked at her. “Long time,” he mumbled.

“Hey, bro,” she said, and gave Rick a bear hug, which he stiffly tolerated. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Aren’t you glad to see the ghost of your little sister?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “I’m just pissed off. These Flatliner jackasses keep starting stuff. They almost got us suspended today.”

“You got in a fight?”

“It was just a misunderstanding,” Zhai said placidly.

“With the guys who were sitting out here?” Aimee pressed.

“No, with the Three Stooges,” Rick said sarcastically. “Yeah, with the guys sitting out here.” He took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter, though. We’ll get them back.”

“When and if I say so,” Zhai admonished, his face expressionless.

As Rick glanced at Zhai, Aimee tensed for the explosion she knew was coming. But, to her surprise, Rick only nodded. “Right,” he muttered. “Whatever.”

Aimee was so filled with amazement she almost laughed. She’d never seen Rick defer to anyone except their father, and certainly not someone half his size. Rick looked at her, taking her in for the first time.

“What the heck did you do to your hair?” he asked, with his usual sneer of superiority.

Aimee’s hand went to her head, self-consciously. “You don’t like it?”

“It’s great—if you’re a truck driver. And if you get any skinnier you’ll blow away.”

Zhai merely looked at her, a polite smile on his face. “We’d better get to class, Rick,” he said. “Welcome back, Aimee. Your hair looks nice.”

And the boys were gone.

Aimee sat back down in the plastic chair. She wrapped the heavy sweatshirt more tightly about herself and, surrounded by warmth and comfort and that divine, heavenly smell, she pulled the hood down over her face, trying not to cry.

•••

In a brazen, falsetto voice that made Raphael laugh, Ignacio belted out the lyrics of Kung Fu Fighting.

They were walking together along the train tracks, each balancing on his own steel rail. On either side of them a forest of old, thick-trunked oak trees soared high into the sky, their age-gnarled branches enmeshed into a wall of green so thick it was as if the tracks existed in a completely separate world from the rest of Middleburg. White butterflies wafted tremulously among the leaves. Bees buzzed from wildflower to wildflower. Heat from the afternoon sun radiated from the steel and wood and stone, making the tree-lined corridor in front of them appear liquid, mysterious, making the tracks ahead seem to undulate like a long, silver snake. Here, it was easy to pretend that the fight that day had never happened at all.

Raphael had watched the new kid with interest, observing first how he had appeared crushed as his mother glared at him on his way to the office, then how he had plummeted into despair when Principal Innis ordered his secretary to print out the suspension forms.

Raphael had seen more tension build in Ignacio as they waited. He was probably worrying that his mother was right outside, cooking up a million ways to curse him out. But most interesting of all was his reaction when Raphael had asked him if he wanted to get the hell out of there before the principal got back. Ignacio’s wide grin had been full of relief and release, hope and mischief. At that moment Raphael knew the two of them would be great friends. He’d led Ignacio out the back door, down the maintenance stairwell, out onto the loading dock and down the hill behind the school—the hill that led to the tracks.

At first Ignacio had been on edge. Being grounded was just the beginning of a variety of punishments his mom kept up her sleeve, he’d told Raphael, and the mildest one. But once they were away from the school, his mood had lifted. By the time they got to the tracks, he was laughing, singing and chatting Raphael’s ear off.

“Seriously, man!” he was saying. “That was crazy! The way you smashed that tray and dropped Abercrombie!”

“Abercrombie?”

“The big blond one. He looks like a beefy model or something.”

Raphael laughed.

“Dude, but you were fast,” Ignacio went on. “I mean fast! You ever watch the Discovery Channel? You were faster than one of those cobras when they strike—pow! Seriously, man—that was sick. Where did you learn all that?”

“From Master Chin, my kung fu teacher.”

“No way. You really know kung fu?”

“Yep.”

Raphael walked a little faster, trying to shake off the feeling he always got when he walked along the tracks. The feeling someone was right behind him, near enough to reach out and touch him . . .

He had never believed the old urban legend—or in the case of Middleburg, small town legend—about some mythical beast inhabiting the tunnels, or the stories of ghosts haunting the abandoned rail cars stored at the train yard at the northeast edge of the Flats. But he still got a creepy feeling sometimes, and he wasn’t the only one.

In spite of the warnings (or because of them) the Flatliners—the boys, anyway—sometimes hung out in one of the tunnels. It had been a rite of passage for them at the age of thirteen to go down into the tunnel and spray paint something on the walls. Some of their best graf writing was on display there—colorful bursts and swirls of letters backing into each other or stacked one atop the other. Their artwork had been refined and embellished over the years, until it had become pretty cool. Cave art of the modern man, Raphael called it.

He often went down to the tunnels or the old train yard to be alone and think, and nothing had ever happened to him, or to anyone he knew.

Except, he thought, the way your hair stands up on the back of your neck sometimes, like somebody’s watching you. But that’s just your imagination. Or sometimes you’re crossing the tracks and you think you hear someone whispering when there’s no one there. But that’s just the wind. All the stories were just superstitions, old folk tales, various parts of the same silly local legend.

But, just to be on the safe side, the Flatliners ventured only twenty or so yards into the tunnel, never further. The darkness waiting for them where the light from the entrance died seemed deep and impenetrable, and you got the feeling that if you went into that darkness you wouldn’t be alone.

Ignacio started singing again, so loudly a flock of birds in a nearby tree took flight. After a couple of lines he paused, thoughtful for a moment. “So, the funky Chinaman with Abercrobie? Who’s he?”

Raphael snorted.

“Zhai Shao—and he’s not that funky, believe me. You should see him try to dance.”

“He was crazy fast, too.” Ignacio said.

“But not as fast as me.”

“I don’t know, man,” Ignacio considered. “He was pretty quick. It might’ve been a tie.”

Raphael nodded, accepting Ignacio’s answer.

“Zhai is their leader.”

“Whose leader?”

“The Toppers,” Raphael said simply, as if it were a commonly known fact.

“What’s that—the Toppers?”

“A gang.”

Ignacio laughed so hard he fell off the steel rail he was walking on. Raphael stopped walking and watched him, no longer smiling, waiting for the laughter to subside.

“Really?” Ignacio said, gasping for breath. “Come on—really? You’re going to tell me this tiny, Podunk little town in the middle of Midwestern B.F.E. has gangs?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Wow,” Ignacio replied, catching his breath and stepping back onto his rail. “That’s just all kinds of ironic.”

“Why?”

“Because. The whole reason my mom made us move out of L.A. was so I wouldn’t wind up in a gang like all my cousins.”

It was Raphael’s turn to laugh. He looked at Ignacio, his eyebrows raised. “You serious?”

“As a heart attack,” Ignacio said. “That’s why I can’t get into any more scraps, for real. My mom stresses about it. I’m afraid the she’s going to have a stroke or something.”

Raphael paused, considering Ignacio’s words. “But what if you have to fight?”

“What do you mean?”

Raphael stopped walking and turned to face Ignacio, who stopped, too.

“I mean,” Raphael said, “what if you had to join a gang to survive here? What if you had to fight?”

Ignacio looked at Raphael grimly for a moment, and then shook his head. “Come on man. Even if there are gangs here, this ain’t the Bloods and the Crips. I’m from South Central Los Angeles. Gangs are like, 18th Street, Florencia Thirteen, the Latin Kings. And those dudes are serious killers.”

“Okay,” Raphael said. “You don’t believe there’s a gang war going on here?”

Ignacio shrugged. “I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, I don’t see the need for it here. I mean, these aren’t exactly mean streets or anything.”

Raphael looked at Ignacio and nodded, his eyes betraying none of his thoughts. Wordlessly, he turned and headed down a narrow trail. It was steep and muddy, crisscrossed with tree roots and bounded on each side by thorn bushes. Here and there, an old tire or a broken beer bottle sat off to the side, tangled in browning weeds—testaments to the carelessness of some earlier generation. After a few moments of descent, the boys emerged onto the cracking blacktop of a residential street.

It appeared to be quite an affluent neighborhood. Huge, three story houses stood on wide lots, separated by thick stands of trees and bushes. Some of the yards were surrounded by wrought iron fences.

“We crossed over the tracks now. We’re in the Flats,” Raphael said.

He walked so fast Ignacio almost had to jog to keep up, but even at that pace his first impression quickly melted away. As they got closer, Ignacio could see that the houses he had at first taken for pristine mansions were not what they appeared to be. Paint fell from their siding in long, leprous pieces. Front stoops were cracked. Shutters were missing. Windowpanes were shattered, replaced either with plywood or a black void. The wrought iron fences were rusted, listing, missing half their bars. The lawns and gardens were overrun with thick tangles of weeds, thistles, thorny bushes and nettles. Others were completely barren, with no plants at all. On each decaying front porch, five or six mailboxes had been nailed to the wall. Several front doors had livid, yellow eviction notices taped to them.

These had all been beautiful mansions once. Now, they were squalid tenements. But Ignacio wasn’t surprised. The apartment he and his family had just moved into was just like these. In fact, he realized as he recognized a street sign, he lived right around the corner.

“Okay,” he said, breaking the silence. “So the Flats is kind of ghetto. No reason to join a gang.”

Raphael stopped walking. He turned back to Ignacio. “That’s for you to decide,” he said.

“What about these Toppers—where do they live?”

Raphael pointed over Ignacio’s shoulder; Ignacio turned and looked.

Perhaps a mile away, beyond the tattered rooftops of the Flats houses, stood a hill. Even from this distance, the sight of it made Ignacio gasp. It looked, more than anything, like heaven. It was green up there, verdant and peaceful looking. A series of sprawling white mansions spiraled their way up the hillside, like dozens of palaces or Greek temples lined up, side by side. The afternoon sun painted the little mountain with an orangey-pink, romantic light, and chugging sprinkler systems haloed it in the faintest aura of mist. Ignacio had driven through Beverly Hills a few times, but this was the most beautiful place he had ever seen.

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